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I would rather be a freeman among slaves than a slave among freemen.

Jonathan Swift

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Jonathan Swift
Age: 77 †
Born: 1667
Born: November 30
Died: 1745
Died: October 19
Essayist
Human Rights Activist
Novelist
Opinion Journalist
Pamphleteer
Philosopher
Poet
Priest
Prosaist
Public Figure
Dublin city
Isaac Bickerstaff
M. B. Drapier
Lemuel Gulliver
Simon Wagstaff
Slave
Among
Rather
Freedom
Would
Freemen
Freeman
Slaves

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Such a man, truly wise, creams off Nature leaving the sour and the dregs for philosophy and reason to lap up.
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Every day is an opportunity to make a new happy ending. May you live all the days of your life.
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Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse. Whoever makes the fewest people uneasy is the best bred in the room.
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They say fish should swim thrice * * * first it should swim in the sea (do you mind me?) then it should swim in butter, and at last, sirrah, it should swim in good claret.
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Poor nations are hungry, and rich nations are proud and pride and hunger will ever be at variance.
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I have known some men possessed of good qualities which were very serviceable to others, but useless to themselves like a sun-dial on the front of a house, to inform the neighbours and passengers, but not the owner within.
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Pedantry is properly the over-rating of any kind of knowledge we pretend to.
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For poetry, he's past his prime, He takes an hour to find a rhyme His fire is out, his wit decayed, His fancy sunk, his muse a jade. I'd have him throw away his pen, But there's no talking to some men.
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I forget whether advice be among the lost things which Ariosto says are to be found in the moon: that and time ought to have been there.
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I am convinced that if the virtuosi could once find out a world in the moon, with a passage to it, our women would wear nothing but what directly came from thence.
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Sweeping from butcher's stalls, dung, guts, and blood, Drown'd puppies, stinking sprats, all drench'd in mud, Dead cats, and turnip-tops, come tumbling down the flood.
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Careful observers may foretell the hour (By sure prognostics) when to dread a show'r. While rain depends, the pensive cat gives o'er Her frolics, and pursues her tail no more.
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The bulk of mankind is as well equipped for flying as thinking.
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If a man makes me keep my distance, the comfort is, he keeps his at the same time.
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My father had a small Estate in Nottinghamshire I was the Third of five Sons.
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You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.
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Desponding Phyllis was endu'd With ev'ry Talent of a Prude, She trembled when a Man drew near Salute her, and she turn'd her Ear: If o'er against her you were plac'd She durst not look above your Waist
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Books, the children of the brain.
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We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.
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Perpetual aiming at wit is a very bad part of conversation. It is done to support a character: it generally fails it is a sort of insult on the company, and a restraint upon the speaker.
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